Our son is 7 weeks old. I'm breastfeeding so I know I have to do the feeds, but my partner genuinely doesn't wake up. Baby screaming in a bassinet a foot from his head, nothing. He snores through the whole thing.
He's back at work and says he needs to sleep because he's driving. Which, fine. But I'm a zombie and starting to resent him.
How do other couples do nights?
Dad here. What worked for us: I did the nappy change and the burping, my wife did the feed. Meant I was awake too but she could go straight back to sleep after. Also I took the baby from 6am so she could sleep till 9 every day.
If he's sleeping through crying, you might genuinely have to wake him. Not as punishment, just to tag him in.
Could you express one bottle a night so he does the 11pm feed and you can go to bed at 8? Even one block of 5-6 hours made a massive difference to me.
"I need to sleep because I'm driving" is fair, but so is "I need to sleep because I'm keeping a human alive". Weekends he should take over a lot more. Fridays and Saturdays I did every night feed with expressed milk.
The resentment is so normal, but please actually tell him before it builds. Mine had no idea how bad I was feeling because I kept saying "I'm fine".
Update: had the conversation. He was genuinely shocked, he thought I'd been coping fine. We're now doing the dinosaur_dad_92 approach: he does nappy changes and I do feeds, and he takes baby at 6 so I can sleep till 9. And he does Friday and Saturday nights with expressed milk. First good sleep in seven weeks last night.
Love this update. Communication really is half the battle.
Brilliant. The 6am handover saved my sanity with both of mine.
Good on him for stepping up. I'll be honest, I didn't do enough of this when my first was born and it was part of what went wrong between me and his mum. Small stuff like doing the nappy at 3am matters more than people think.
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